How to choose the right structured data strategy
Tips for choosing the right structured data for your business pages and website.
According to Gary Illyes at Google, structured data is here to stay, at least for a few years. To clearly describe contents to Google and other search engines, it seems to be standard practice to add structured data markup to your pages.
Structured data for local businesses
Google has declared that it is acceptable and recommended to use the most specific subtype of Local Business markup if it is on the schema.org website. You can visit the LocalBusiness page on the schema.org website and scroll down to the bottom to see the available sub-types for LocalBusiness, however, the rabbit hole goes deeper, and those also have subtypes in some cases, which are even more specific. Google didn't specify how specific, so you can play it safe or try the most specific category if there is one that fits. Google did recommend to use the most specific subtypes, so I have tried this and it didn't seem to hurt. If you notice that searches for that particular sub-type don't improve or get worse, it might make sense to use a more generic first level sub-type (especially if support of other search engines is essential).If you are using a WordPress plugin, check to see if has more specific business types, and also if your business type is listed on schema.org. If all the plugin offers is generic LocalBusiness, Corporation and Organization, it may be useful, but could probably be improved upon.
Some plugins may add this markup to every single page, which I personally don't find to be appropriate unless every page is about said business. I would add the LocalBusiness markup to the homepage in addition to Schema.org/Website markup, with the name of your business/organization as the publisher property. This in theory would imply that the website is published by the business, and maybe the schema for every page isn't necessary, there may be some debate to this. Most plugins will add the Website schema object and declare the site search property for the whole website, which seems like a good solution.
Overall, the business schema should at least be on the homepage or contact page, it could possibly reside on an about page if you have one. So it is up to you if you want to add the schema to every page about your different services, no harm in doing so.
Some plugins may over do things and add schema to every single page or cause other problems, you may want to ask around or search for the best plugins before installing them and taking the time to fill in all of the fields. It always makes sense to check your pages with the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure all of the required fields have been filled in and there are no errors.
Structured data for non-local or franchises
If you are a corporation or organization which isn't based on one local site or you do business nationally or internationally as a brand for example, your schema markup can vary a bit more. As of now, I don't know of any plugins that will create franchise markup for multiple locations. If you are a brand only, you can use Corporation or Organization as your schema object until more specific subtypes are officially supported. If you have several locations, you can probably get away with LocalBusiness markup for every location page. However, you might want to create a Corporation (schema.org object) and use SubOrganization -> @type LocalBusiness markup to define all of this in one place. Another option is to use ParentOrganization markup on each of the location pages to declare the Corporation. It is recommended to add a different @id for each business location, especially when using JSON-LD markup, to help disambiguate the different locations.Other types of broadly supported Schema.org markup
Keep in mind, this article is only an attempt at helping you to find the best option using schema.org structured data for your business. There are many other types of structured data which seem to be supported by various search engines. Opengraph, rdfa, turtle... all are useful for various different reasons and niches. RDFa can be used with the schema.org vocabulary, it is similar to microdata.There are 3 ways of implementing schema.org. Microdata and RDFa are implemented by declaring the object / properties within the html and the other way is by using a JSON-LD script which can be placed anywhere on the page. You can even use both types on the same page. I'd recommend using microdata when the content is being declared as a property, such as in the case of reviews or blog articles. These types are supported using JSON-LD, but it seems a bit redundant to add article/review body content inside of the JSON object in addition to what's on the page.
If your website is a blog, each post should have blogposting markup for each page or newsarticle depending on your niche. Amp pages require structured data to work, so, much of that will be handled if you are using a plugin. There are many other types of well supported markup, but you'll probably want to investigate what is supported before taking to time to create detailed schema for your content. Google is pretty clear about what is accepted here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery
Site Raiser has developed a tool to Generate a schema.org JSON-LD script for your Organization / Business which is useful for single enitity organizations, corporations and local businesses.
